


Constant Debauchery

by Blake



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alpha Harry, Alpha Louis, Alpha/Alpha, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Cambridge, Casual Sex, Edwardian AU, Friends to Lovers, Gay Awakening, Gender discourse, Heavy Drinking, Historical AU, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Sexism, Skinny Dipping, Smoking, Substance Abuse, boys being stupid, but it's really not as angsty as it could be!, gays have always been here, historical inaccuracies are fun, mentions of past Harry Styles/OMCs, mouth knotting, poor decision making, punting, sexual awakening, so much repression, victorian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 19:23:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17966537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: When Harry speaks, it’s with a cloud of smoke spilling out across Louis’s ear, cheek, and neck. “I’m glad I’m not the only alpha who’s not an idiot.”Louis forces his smile to stay on his face as Harry stands up and follows the boys as they pick up their things and start walking, but he’s shaken to the core, even though he shouldn’t be. For so many reasons, he shouldn’t be. But this is the moment that he realizes what he’s known, on some level—what he hassmelled—all night. Harry is an alpha.It’s also the moment that he realizes he’s disappointed that it’s the truth.or,Harry is an alpha who loves getting his mouth knotted by other alphas. Louis is happy to serve. Fun smut! But also angst and sexual awakenings.





	Constant Debauchery

**Author's Note:**

> title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrzPAiKEu6s).  
> Big thank you to those who helped me write and edit this!

The night that Louis meets Harry, it’s because a pebble cracks his window.

Louis sets his Virgil aside and noisily scrapes his chair back away from the desk. He squints at the glass, trying to look into the darkness past the reflection of the flickering flame he’s been reading by. A second pebble smacks against the pane, and he realises he’ll have to stand up and open it to see who’s trying to get his attention.

The hiss of a strained whisper wafts up to him from the ground far below. “Louis Tomlinson?”

Louis can only make out a vague shape below. “Yes?” he asks, warily. He’s only been at Cambridge for three weeks, so he can’t imagine who would be breaking his window two hours after sundown.

“ _Come down here_.”

“Who’s there?” Louis calls, his voice hesitant. He’s only just started his education here, and he doesn’t think it would be wise to be known as the kind of person who breaks windows and wanders outside in the middle of the night. 

“ _It’s Edward Sanders. You’ve been invited to join us_.”

After a moment’s pause, Louis blows out the flame and heads out the door of his room and down the staircase. His grandfather’s parting advice before Louis had left was simply to accept any invitation that came his way. He had not expected invitations to break his windows, but perhaps that probability was why his grandfather’s advice had been so vague and ominous.

Edward Sanders is standing just outside, his pale blond hair shining in the moonlight now that he’s close enough to see. Louis knows him from Latin, but they haven’t spoken to each other much beyond the typical introductions. Still, when Sanders turns around and starts walking into the darkness toward the river without another word, Louis follows.

Louis tries not to stumble too much in the wet grass. The air smells overwhelmingly of dew, moss, wet rocks, and then—and _then_ —he hears a group of men, laughing.

As they approach the voices, centered around a small bonfire, Louis begins to fear that he’s being drawn in as a sacrifice for some pagan ritual. The fear doesn’t exactly disappear when the ten or so boys around the fire all turn to grin madly at him when Sanders announces their presence.

“Louis!” one of the boys shouts, jovially. Trying not to appear too shocked, Louis looks the boy over. It’s Martin Jameson, one of Trinity College’s most highly regarded seniors. Louis only knows him by reputation; he’s never spoken to him. The fact that Jameson somehow knows his name is a bit disorienting.

A dark wine bottle is pushed up against his chest, and Louis finds that it’s attached to the freckled, bare arm of a red-headed boy he has only seen in the library. “Make yourself comfortable, Louis,” the boy says. 

Louis may have much more experience in bending rules than breaking them, but he’s never been uncomfortable enough to lose his sense of humour. “You’re not about to eat me, are you?” he asks in a casual tone. Once the boys start laughing, he adds, “Fill me up with liquor and then roast me over this fire like a goose?”

Jameson stops laughing to soberly assure him, “Oh, it’s not liquor, it’s poison.”

The boy directly across from Louis catches his eye. He’s the only one not laughing, though he’s looking at Louis with great intent and amusement. Louis can’t quite make out the colour of his eyes in the orange light between them, but they’re glossy and big and fixed on Louis. They don’t even slide shut when the boy brings a bottle to his lips and swallows a mouthful of whatever is in it. His mouth is as glossy and big as his eyes are.

“...told you he would be a good choice,” an abrasive voice cuts in, pulling Louis’s attention back to the group. His eyes sting from staring into the smoky flames and beyond.

“Hey, he was my idea,” contests yet another person. Louis can’t keep straight the names and faces of all these men who supposedly know _his_ name.

“Here’s what happened,” Sanders declares, joining the circle and sitting down for the first time since they arrived. “Georgie said you sounded French. Bobbers said you smelled like good cigarettes. Baz said you had a mischievous twinkle in your eye.” Sanders has pointed at three people that Louis has never seen before, and now he has reached the point in the circle where the boy with the glossy eyes and lips sits. “Styles…,” Sanders begins, before trailing off. Louis’s breath tightens, still taken aback by the fact that these boys have had conversations about him without his knowledge. That they’ve talked about the way he _smells_ —even if it’s just his cigarettes. What could this glossy “Styles” boy with his head full of curls have said about him?

In the silence, Styles takes another swig of his drink. “Styles drinks a lot of wine,” Louis suggests as an end to Sanders’s sentence. He may not be able to keep everyone’s names in his head, but he can at least pretend to keep afloat. 

“Yes, yes, quite right,” Jameson agrees through his laughter, patting Louis on the shoulder and skipping over a few people in the circle to point at the next relevant person. Louis’s eyes linger on Styles, though, long enough to offer a smile to indicate that the joke came with no ill will. When Styles smiles around the mouth of his bottle, his tongue flicks momentarily out across the opening, and Louis averts his eyes instinctively, as though he’s just seen something he wasn’t meant to.

“And then Johnny Boy over there noticed that your room was lit until two in the morning, which is always a promising sign.” Jameson, clearly the unofficial leader of the group, claps his hands together commandingly at this point. “And given the accumulated evidence, I proposed that we give you a trial run.”

Louis takes a small sip from the bottle in his hand. Thankfully, it’s just red wine. “And here I was, assuming my only charm was the meatiness of my thighs.”

It feels thrillingly shocking to speak of his body in any way, but since it’s a joke on his consumption in their cannibalistic ritual, it seems a safe hand to play. And he’s right; they all laugh, even Styles. He feels electric with having the attention of this group of students who have been noticing and speaking of him before he even had a chance to make them laugh. He’s suddenly very optimistic of his university prospects, if he’s already made friends without even trying.

Louis stands for a while longer, looking around the circle and testing himself on names as the boys banter about which of their professors is the fattest and would therefore produce the best cuts of meat. 

After recognizing the particular nervous tremble in his fingers, Louis reaches for his cigarettes and matches. The movement catches the attention of one of the men, Don Juan, whose name is at least fairly easy to remember due to the fact that it’s obviously completely fake. Don Juan’s face lights up in delight as he pats the unoccupied stretch of log beside him and shouts, “Louis, old boy, do come sit by me and make yourself at home.” His voice is loud and vivacious but also tinny in an obnoxious way that Louis sometimes fears his own voice sounds. Louis walks around the circle until he’s reached the log in question. There’s more room on the side of it between Don Juan and Styles, but Louis makes a quick decision and seats himself on the other side. If Styles and Don Juan are sharing a bottle of wine, Louis doesn’t want to be rude and get in the way of it.

Don Juan quickly commandeers Louis’s cigarette, and someone else takes away his wine bottle. Empty-handed, Louis reaches into his vest to light another cigarette.

Styles interrupts him by outstretching his hand, broad knuckles adorned with several glittering rings. For some reason, it takes effort for Louis to make himself meet Styles’s eyes, but he succeeds. After tucking his cigarette behind his ear, he slides his own hand into Styles’s, which hangs loosely around his instead of shaking. “Nice to meet you, Louis. I’m Harold Edward Styles.”

“Erm, hi,” Louis stutters, unnaturally slow to invent a clever response. He notices that Styles is leaning so dramatically across the distance between them that Don Juan has to prop his arms back on the grass behind the log just to hold himself somewhat upright.

“My friends call me Harry. Only idiots call me Styles.”

Don Juan apparently tires of holding himself so awkwardly on his palms and surges up, parting their hands with his arms whilst making an impatient sound. As he leans forward into the fire to shrilly debate something someone else has said, Louis looks across his back to return Harry’s smile. “I’m not an idiot,” he says, softer than he means to.

Despite his volume, Harry hears him. He reaches up to tuck a curl away from his face and behind his ear, almost a coy gesture. With a foreign rush in his blood, Louis wonders—but what a stupid thing to wonder.

Harry has the biggest smile Louis has ever seen. “Do you want some?” he asks languidly. His voice is gruff and lush, wet and dry at the same time. Louis looks at him for a moment before he realises that he doesn’t know what Harry’s talking about, then he wonders what Harry’s talking about for another moment before he looks down far enough to see the bottle that Harry is tipping in his direction.

They almost spill it when Don Juan dramatically launches backward in his seat with a grand arm gesture. He apparently debates very hotly. Louis and Harry share a look of laughter, and Louis tips the bottle in a salute to Harry before upending it to take a big mouthful of thick, bitter wine.

“God, I think I can smell the new omega girls at Hughes Hall from here.”

Louis barely manages not to spit out his entire mouthful. He chokes on it instead, forces himself to swallow, and then violently coughs, looking through his burning, tear-blurred eyes to see who could have said such a thing, and whether everyone else is as shocked as he is.

But Louis can’t tell who said it because nearly everyone else is looking at _him_ and _laughing_.

A hand lands heavily on his back, forcing another cough out of him. Then Don Juan jostles him by the shoulders a bit, jovially shouting over the laughter. “Come on, lads, he’s just a fresher! Don’t _overwhelm_ the poor boy.”

Louis looks over at Sanders, the person he had at least somewhat known before tonight, hoping for a glimpse of sanity. But Sanders just offers him an almost mockingly apologetic smirk. Then Louis turns to look at Harry, who is almost completely expressionless, save for a resting sly tightness to his features, as he meets Louis’s gaze.

“They smell vile,” complains one of the other boys who—who is an omega _himself_. Louis had noticed this earlier without even acknowledging it because he didn’t know that he was _allowed_ to notice. Letting himself see it now is like taking a breath of ice-cold air. “It’s bad enough they’ve brought in girls. Why can’t they limit admission to nice beta girls?”

Louis takes a succession of small mouthfuls of wine, having learnt his lesson. He can’t believe this conversation is happening. At least he no longer seems to be the centre of attention, although surely they all must _know_. They probably know, if they’re the type to let themselves know. They’ve probably talked about how he smells like good cigarettes and sounds French and _is an alpha_. 

“Oh, shut your fat omega mouth,” another man sitting across from Louis drawls, not unkindly. Baz, Louis thinks his name is. He’s tall, muscular, with a square jaw that contrasts sharply with the round, wan face of the omega (Wellie?) beside him. “Why should they deprive us alphas of a little pleasure in life?” the man asks as he drains the last of the wine bottle he’s holding with an ironic flourish, winning himself a few tepid chuckles.

Jameson rolls his eyes. “Right, Baz, because we _all_ know you’ll actually take advantage of their presence instead of clamming up every time one so much as looks at you from across the library.”

Baz only blushes a little bit, and it might as well be the wine. “It’s pleasure enough just to smell them.”

Louis’s mind is spinning out of control. In all his life, he has never heard people actually talk about the smell. Of course his friends in school would talk about which girls had pretty faces or would be good matches, but the reasons behind their statements always, _always_ remained unspoken. Whether Louis’s cousin Michael wrote love poems to their neighbour Annabelle because he _knew_ or because he _unconsciously knew_ , it didn’t matter, and it never warranted discussion. It just worked out that way. 

But these new friends of his are talking about all of it so easily, as if they have some version of this same conversation every night. When Louis had started following Sanders to the river, Louis had known, he had smelled them, without even realizing it consciously. He had known they were approaching a group consisting solely of alphas and omegas, but he hadn’t let himself even think it.

“ _Au contraire_ ,” Don Juan declares, spreading his knees and propping his elbows upon them to lean forward. “If you think it’s pleasure enough just to smell them, then you haven’t experienced pleasure.” Louis glances past him to see Harry smoking the cigarette he must have plucked from Don Juan’s fingers. That strange rush in Louis’s blood occurs again as he wonders; he _knows_ on some level what everyone in this circle is, but he hasn’t allowed himself to _see_ yet. And with Don Juan clearly an alpha, and Harry clearly quite close to him, maybe—

But he can’t even believe he has almost-thought such an impossible thought. His mind has gone wild with people talking of alphas, omegas, and betas, he must be confused, to be thinking—

Johnny Boy, the red-headed omega sitting next to Louis who seems to have an interest in peace-making, interjects with, “Have you all seen that new girl with the black hair and the….,” pausing to draw a shape in the air with his hands. Louis’s too close to see it, but he understands the idea enough to not need to.

Wellie speaks up, sticking his hand out over the fire as if reaching for something. “God, yes, I _swear_ she’s a beta. It gets me so wet just to _think_ of fucking her.”

There’s a bit of an uproar after that, as people argue whether she is, in fact, a beta girl, or if she’s too curvy to be. Amidst all the noise, Louis notices an odd moment: Baz, the alpha seated beside Wellie, moves over to loom almost imposingly over his friend. Wellie’s eyes flicker to the side briefly before he seems to shrink and take up less room. No one comments on it, so Louis assumes that Baz and Wellie must be able to nonverbally express their difference of opinion about the beta-or-not girl.

Being able to _know_ what he knows is like seeing a whole new world. 

Don Juan overpowers the other voices. “You lot are all weaklings. I don’t care if that girl’s a beta or an omega, I’d still stick it to her.”

“You fuck anything that moves,” Jameson sniffs dismissively. Louis is only just now realizing that Jameson sits on a log higher than all the others, his expression of alpha-hood seeming so effortless and uncomplicated, so inherited, one more thing he feels entitled to. Now that Louis sees it, he finds it impressive.

“True,” admits Don Juan, who sits low and crouched, the South Pole to Jameson’s North. He smooths his hand over his loose, dark, shoulder-length hair with a smirk. “I’d even fuck that fresher in your hall, the lad with the spectacles. His slick smells as sweet as any girl’s, I swear.”

This, of all things, is the one to send a ripple of silence over the group. The hairs on the back of Louis’s neck rise, not in response to the statement, which he hasn’t yet allowed himself to truly hear, but in acknowledgment of the fact that this is, for some reason, seen as a sort of underhanded attack on Jameson, as though coveting an omega boy who happens to live in Jameson’s house is an affront to Jameson himself.

“Speak for yourself,” Jameson says coolly, clearly making a choice to take the high ground. Freed from the tension, some boys in the group laugh nervously, almost giggling. Louis notices that Baz is now sitting as far from Wellie as is possible without getting up to move.

It’s only now that Louis fully hears what made the group go silent in the first place: the boy next to him admitted to coveting an omega boy. Louis’s gaze flashes quickly over to Harry, who is simply staring intensely into the fire, oddly silent.

Don Juan abruptly joins in the laughter. “You said it yourself, I’ll fuck anything that moves.”

“Except an alpha girl,” Harry suddenly contributes. It’s quiet, dark, but biting all the same.

Feeling very on edge, Louis expects the group to go deathly silent again, but instead, all the boys, save himself and Harry, erupt into noises of disgust and laughter.

Not wanting to isolate himself completely from the group, Louis allows the tension to come out of him in the form of a light laugh. The movement prompts Harry’s gaze to dart over to him instantly, as though he has been watching for Louis’s reaction out of the corner of his eye. Something about it makes Louis’s laughter completely deflate.

The banter then dissolves into a cacophony of insults.

“Maybe if I felt the need to get my prick bitten off.”

“I’d rather fuck Wellie’s nan, she’s probably wetter.”

“What, down by the rough part of town? I’ll leave that to Sanders.”

Louis allows himself a moment of surprise at the fact that the alphas and omegas in the group are contributing equally to the slew of insults. He knows, on some level, that he has never in his life heard of a male omega pairing with a female alpha (he has never heard of a female alpha pairing with anyone, come to think of it), but surely that would be natural. So how—

He stops himself from thinking further. It’s not as though it’s any of his business. 

“True, Sanders doesn’t seem to mind getting his prick bitten off, does he?”

Sanders, who seems to be the mildest, quietest omega in the group, has enough pride to blush madly in the firelight and scowl darkly as if in protest to his own reaction.

Louis knows it’s risky, knows that he’s jeopardizing his place in this strange new group of friends he’s been invited into, but he’s always had a strong reaction to cruelty, and humour that crosses the line of conviviality is cruelty. So he opens his mouth and says, “To be fair, _Johnny Boy_ is probably wetter than Wellie’s nan, if that’s your only criterion.”

Harry and Don Juan burst into hissing laughter to his right. Gradually, after a moment of scrutinizing Louis’s best attempt at a neutral expression, the others join in, too. Someone punches Johnny Boy in the arm, and Johnny Boy good-naturedly punches back as Louis catches his breath, which nearly evaporated the moment he said the word “wetter.” He glances at Sanders, who doesn’t look back at him, and then he glances at Harry, who is swaying slow and wide with drink as he laughs, whose eyes are shinier than they were when Louis arrived. Harry, who was the first—aside from the only other person in the group tonight to joke about male alphas mating with male omegas—to laugh at his joke, maybe because he—

“And what about you?” Jameson asks, incidentally silencing the group. Harry scrapes his hand all the way through his curly locks, a long sweep from his forehead to his neck. He’s looking at Louis, and it takes Louis a moment to realise that everyone else is as well.

“What _about_ me, Jameson?” he responds. He remembers the cigarette he had tucked behind his ear eons ago when Harry had interrupted him to shake his hand. The air grows chill around them and begins to seep in through the wool of his simple coat. He lights a match and inhales from his cigarette, instantly warmed.

“Are you wetter than Wellie’s nan?”

Louis’s first instinct is to view the question as a threat. He tries not to show it, though, finishing his inhale and then blowing out a cloud of smoke at the dying fire. Jameson is simply asking whether he’s an omega, like Johnny Boy, but surely all of them already know. If any of them has been close enough to him to smell tobacco, and if this is the way they spend their Wednesday nights, then they all _know_ that he’s an alpha. It’s a test of something else, then. Of his cruelty, perhaps, or of his insecurity. Louis has a long-held suspicion that they’re the same thing.

He glances over at Wellie, whose head is now resting on Baz’s shoulder in an easy-going manner. He doesn’t seem the type to get unnecessarily upset. “Why don’t you ask Wellie’s nan?”

This answer earns him shrieks of laughter that must be heard as far away as the library. He smiles warmly at Wellie, who seems to take it all in good stride. Jameson isn’t laughing, but he gives Louis a nod and a haughty look of respect. It seems that he has passed some kind of test, so Louis breathes in through his cigarette with a small sense of relief.

Before he can exhale, though, the thing is plucked from his fingers. He opens his eyes, prepared to scold Don Juan for helping himself yet again, but it’s Harry who’s standing before him, bending down over him with a hand braced on Louis’s shoulder, sucking in air through the tip of Louis’s cigarette. Harry’s cheeks cave in as he does it, and his lips look almost comically big around the thin roll. Louis stares, his heart stuttering in the sudden cold as the bonfire turns to embers.

When Harry speaks, it’s with a cloud of smoke spilling out across Louis’s ear, cheek, and neck. “I’m glad I’m not the only alpha who’s not an idiot.”

Louis forces his smile to stay on his face while Harry stands up and follows the boys as they pick up their things and start walking, but he’s shaken to the core, even though he shouldn’t be. For so many reasons, he shouldn’t be. But this is the moment when he realises what he’s known, on some level—what he has _smelled_ —all night. Harry is an alpha.

It’s also the moment when he realises he’s disappointed that it’s the truth.

\----

Louis attends his lectures in the morning, sleeps in the afternoon, and reads just after supper. At night, he joins his friends.

Most nights, they meet out on the far bank of the river Cam. When it’s cold, they go to Jameson’s room because it’s the largest on campus and impeccably clean. When they’re feeling adventurous, they break into the Wren Library and read each other the naughtiest excerpts from the ancient texts that they can find.

Amongst the boys, Louis has made allies of many but close friends of none. Sanders, the quiet omega from whom he had deflected attention that first night, saves him from making a fool of himself in Latin one day and smiles coolly, but meaningfully, at him after it’s done. Johnny Boy, the peacemaker, comes to him almost daily for help with understanding Milton. And Wellie, the meek omega who had nonverbally given Louis permission to tease him that first night, lingers around him, finding him in the halls and sitting with him at meals, talking excitedly about the weather as if waiting to be asked about something more important. The only problem is that Louis doesn’t know what he’s meant to ask.

And Harry. If he thinks about it, he doesn’t really see Harry much outside of their group gatherings. Harry’s a year ahead of him, in another college, and his father is a member of Parliament. He learns this last fact from Wellie, rather than from Harry himself.

“What are you studying?” Louis asks Harry one night in Jameson’s room. They’ve shared so little casual conversation, and Louis loves casual conversation.

Louis’s drunk, but he thinks Harry looks at his mouth for a full minute before he looks into his eyes and answers, “I’m studying the shackles that…bind us all…to the governing class.”

Perhaps _because_ Louis’s drunk, he playfully, too delicately, punches Harry in the jaw. “You _are_ the governing class,” he admonishes.

“Am I not bound to it, then?” Harry counters, though he’s looking demurely down at the floor, as though embarrassed by Louis’s comment.

Flooded with sudden remorse, Louis leans forward in his seat and tucks the perpetual stray curl behind Harry’s ear. He thinks Harry looks at him out of the corner of his eye, but it’s hard to tell. “What about you? What course of study are you taking?” Harry asks.

Louis readily answers, “I hope to become a professor.”

Harry drinks from the glass in his hand, still looking at the floor. With affected brightness, he then turns to look at Louis. “Please inform me if I ever misstep, professor.”

It’s one of those things that makes Louis’s blood surge nonsensically, that reminds him he’s still completely out of his element amongst this group of boys who speak so freely. For some reason, it’s these harmless comments from Harry that make him feel this way, more so than Jameson prattling on about the sweet fragrance of his omega fiancée who’s waiting for him back home.

Louis tucks that stubborn curl behind Harry’s ear yet again. “Something tells me you earn nothing but top marks,” he says cheerily.

Harry simply raises his eyebrows high on his easily-furrowed forehead in reply. Johnny Boy comes to Louis’s side and draws him bodily away to act as judge in a competition of who can piss farthest out the window.

Jameson wins.

\----

On an autumn day so cold that the rest of the students are huddled in the library, someone suggests they go punting. This quickly evolves into someone challenging someone else to a race, which then evolves into a ten-way challenge.

Louis has never been on a punt in his life, let alone steered one, but he is assured that he has no chance of being worse than Styles.

“You’re my main competition for ninth place,” Louis comments, his airway constricted with cold as they walk to the river docks. He takes his next step wide to his right and knocks his elbow gently into Harry’s arm.

Harry makes an exaggerated face of determination. “You’re going to be begging for mercy.”

When they get to the punts, Louis follows the other boys and claims one of his own, twisting the pole around, experimenting with how to push off and pivot to manoeuvre the boat through the water. He doesn’t even notice that Harry’s still standing on the dock, undressing, until he looks up and sees him slowly dragging his undershirt over his head.

“Why’s he doing that?” Louis asks, not realizing how frantic it sounds until it comes out.

Sanders sails easily past, saying only, “You’ll see.”

Harry’s body isn’t much different from how Louis would have guessed. His torso and arms bear some amount of muscle, though he’s still soft in places and rather slight over all. There are a few moles and some scattered dark hairs adorning his pale skin. Louis has surely seen another alpha undressed before, but he’s never seen another alpha undressed and let himself see him as an alpha, as another example of what Louis is. His eyes catch on various things: the peaks of his nipples puckering in the cold, the bony structure of his hunched shoulders, the thatch of long hairs in his underarm.

Louis almost tumbles into the water when his punt rams abruptly into the dock.

The lads don’t let him hear the end of it for another two minutes. They haven’t even started the race, and already Louis has nearly lost. He doesn’t tell them that the accident only happened because he was distracted. For some reason, it seems easier to pretend that he had been trying and failing to steer, rather than to open up the topic of him being young and inexperienced enough that he’s still shocked by nudity.

When they all line up their punts, two by five, Louis cautiously glances over at Harry, noting that he’s still wearing his drawers, at least, before turning his attention back to the others. Don Juan is holding them all in an absurd suspense before declaring the race’s start, a heavy, tense silence standing with them.

In that silence, Louis feels something shift in the air, so he looks around, trying to source it. The late afternoon sunlight seems to drip through the trees, thick like so much honey, and the day has a particular warmth to it, despite the objective cold. The breeze is so faint that Louis smells it more than feels it. There’s something on that breeze, something coming.

He doesn’t have time to sense what that something is, though, because Don Juan finally sends out a shrill whistle, and then everyone is pushing off with a cacophony of cheers and wet, scraping noises. 

Louis instantaneously understands the appeal of this sport, and he’s laughing raucously right along with everyone else before he’s even passed his first opponent. It requires balance, strength, and speed, and every one of the lads looks absolutely ridiculous. They’re all careening into one another, getting the front of their boats lodged in the bank, splashing each other with their poles. Louis’s cheeks burn pleasantly from smiling, and his arms burn pleasantly from steadily sinking his pole into the ground and propelling forward.

He passes Wellie first, who shockingly finds the strength to lift the entire pole out of the water and smack the wet end of it against Louis’s backside in revenge. Louis shrieks, affronted, but mostly amused and delighted.

When he turns to look ahead, he finds himself right behind Harry. The columns of muscle alongside Harry’s spine twist and glisten in the light, his long, soft calves tense as he struggles to balance.

There’s a splash behind him as Wellie begins to catch up again. Louis wonders if this is Harry’s tactic: punting in the nude so that his opponents get distracted and forget to surpass him.

Louis won’t succumb to such a preposterous plan.

“Harold Edward Styles,” he calls out, only as loud as the various screams and shouts of the rest of the boys.

Harry glances over his shoulder, and he has the most playful look on his face, as though he’s a mischievous child on the run with a pudding he’s just stolen from the kitchen. It makes Louis unreasonably happy to look at, but perhaps it’s not so ridiculous. Most of the time they spend together, Harry is in darkness, drinking, and looking as though he’s got something on his mind. This is the first time that he’s seen Harry so childishly enjoying life.

“Come to beg for mercy?” Harry taunts, pulling ahead of their friend Bobbers with his next push. He stumbles when the pole dislodges and his balance shifts, and Louis takes great pleasure in cackling in laughter at his lack of balance.

“What, from you? You can’t even hold the pole right!”

Just as Louis is about to pass, Bobbers turns his boat to the side, blocking him and causing him to bump and lose his momentum. Louis manages to carefully steer around him and sinks happily into the ache in his shoulders as he strains to get his momentum back.

Up ahead, Harry is doing to Sanders what Bobbers had just done to Louis. Beyond them, Georgie and Johnny Boy are duelling with their poles as though with swords.

“This is the most absurd race I’ve ever been a part of!” Louis announces ecstatically. Instead of the bank, Louis puts his pole on the back of Sanders’s punt, spinning him around and into Harry’s so that Louis has room to slide past them on the side.

Harry dislodges from the tangle with determination and follows closely behind Louis, who doesn’t mind, really. If he and Harry were expected to lose this race, wouldn’t it be delightful if they both did very well instead?

One after another, they glide past Georgie and Johnny Boy, the latter of whom still has the grace to interrupt his own floating duel to give Louis a congratulatory cheer for passing him.

Jameson, Baz, and Don Juan are not far ahead. With the finish line in short range, their race has clearly devolved into messy attempts to upend one another, none of them confident enough to count on winning purely by speed. They’re certainly doing a good job of blocking the entire passage.

“Harold,” Louis calls, thinking quickly, slowing down, allowing Harry to pull up alongside him. Louis’s eyes flicker over the scene ahead of them, strategizing. “I’m jumping in your boat.”

And so he does, Harry snickering in sinister delight as he makes the treacherous leap. Louis sits low in a middle seat immediately, spreading his legs to try to get their balance back. Then he drags his pole out of the water and lodges it in the cabin of his recently abandoned punt, pushing it out perpendicularly in front of them like a battering ram and telling Harry to push as fast as he can. It’s hard work, with the extra drag of the sideways boat out in front of them, and Louis listens to the sounds of Harry’s panting breaths until his own breaths match up in perfect synchronicity.

The three alphas don’t even see it coming. Louis’s boat crashes into them, and he and Harry don’t have enough momentum to knock them over, but they have the perfect amount of momentum to shove them all over to one side, leaving Harry free to glide past. Louis abandons his own punt amidst the wreckage, and their speed suddenly doubles as Harry races them toward the giant, moss-strewn oak tree that marks the finish line.

“Louis!” Harry exclaims as they near the finish line, amazement in his voice.

Louis looks back to see that no one is close to catching up, despite the renewed efforts of Jameson and Baz to start actually racing again. Then he looks up and sees those thatches of Harry’s underarm hair, sees the sweat glistening across his shoulders. Harry’s grinning like an idiot, and Louis wishes he could have a photograph of this moment, to show to Harry the next time he seems sad. He wants to remember this moment forever.

They sail past the finish line.

Harry drops the pole and spreads his arms out victoriously with a giant, whooping shout into the treetops. Moved by excitement, Louis stands up and launches himself into those open arms, grabbing tightly around the sweat-slicked skin of Harry’s back and trying not to knock either of them over. “We did it! We did it!”

“We did it!” Harry agrees, grabbing Louis around the shoulders and lifting his feet off the floor of the boat. They explode into laughter as they nearly tip over, barely managing to right themselves in time. Louis places a steading hand on Harry’s waist until he seems less liable to fall over. And then he keeps his hand there, possibly because Harry never seems stable enough to release to gravity.

He had always thought Harry was significantly taller than him, but now, standing close like this and watching the golden light catch in Harry’s green eyes, he realises that there’s not much distance between them at all.

“Suck my knot!” someone shouts, startling Louis. He didn’t realise their friends had caught up with them, and he also hasn’t yet grown accustomed to such exclamations. He stumbles backward, tripping on one of the seats before catching himself on his other foot.

“Kiss my arse, Harry Styles, you little fuck!”

If Louis listens carefully, he can hear the good humour behind their angry insults.

“Tommo, I can’t believe I ever deemed you trustworthy!” It’s Don Juan who’s addressing Louis, and it sounds at least more impressed than betrayed.

Louis shrugs. “I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”

“Scoundrel,” Don Juan declares with a sly, approving look.

But Harry protests, “Louis is the noblest of us all, sacrificing his own boat so that I could finally take my rightful place as winner.”

Louis gasps, twisting around to make sure that Harry’s joking. He is, of course, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to be splashed with a face full of water. Louis squats down quick as lightning to send a wave swooping toward Harry’s wide grin.

Harry flinches with his arms crossed in front of his face, but he moves so suddenly that he has to take a step to counterbalance, and then that step sends the punt wobbling so wildly that he loses his footing completely, falling flat on his back into the water, his flailing limbs the last to disappear.

Louis fights a premature instinct to jump in to save him, but he recognises that it’s just because he feels guilty. Harry surfaces not half a second later, sputtering, gasping, and laughing, and Louis senses a splash coming toward him that he easily blocks. He’s never seen Harry’s hair wet like this, his curls washed away into wet strands strewn across his face.

“Don’t worry, this happens every time,” Jameson assures him from where he stands on the bank.

“I told you you’d see why he doesn’t wear clothes,” Sanders drawls, having finally caught up. Louis can’t spare him a glance, however, because Harry’s swimming neatly over to the edge of the river, crawling onto the bank on his hands and knees, but looking like he’s having more fun than he’s had in a long time. His drawers are soaked through, showing hints of every shadow underneath. Louis watches him drag himself, panting, onto the grass before lying down with his arms outstretched. Harry turns his face toward the sun and lifts one eyelid to peek at Louis with amusement before shutting his eyes again as Jameson begins to announce the final order of racers from first to last. Beneath clinging wet cotton, Louis can see the thick line of Harry’s cock against his thigh. He still doesn’t quite understand Sanders’s comment; does Harry strip his clothes off so that he can bathe, practically naked, under the sun?

Then the lads start calling him from the shore, making him realise that he’s the last one still on his—well, _Harry’s_ —boat. He makes his way safely and dryly to land.

As a group, they start the walk back. Louis finds it troubling that they’re just leaving the boats there, abandoned, a problem for someone else to deal with. He finds it troubling that all the alphas placed higher in the race than all the omegas, yet no one pauses in their speeches on the inferior punting skill of Wellie, Bobbers, Sanders, and Johnny Boy to point out that there may be some biological advantage that warrants acknowledgment. He finds it troubling that no one has offered Harry a shirt or coat, leaving him to shiver violently in his bare flesh and wet drawers. Now that he sees things more clearly than he used to, he sees that he’s expected to shiver on his own because he’s an alpha, and one doesn’t offer one’s coat to an alpha.

Troubled, and simultaneously still floating on air from his win, Louis offers Harry his shirt. They’re far enough in the back of the group that no one comments on it, and Harry grins easily as he takes it, wrapping it around his waist to render his drawers slightly less invisible. Louis smiles to himself, endeared by this display of Harry’s priorities. When he pulls his braces up over his undershirt, Harry playfully snaps one against his back before running away to the front of the group.

When they reach the docks, some of the boys head back to their halls. Louis’s one of the few to stay with Harry, who returns to his pile of clothes. Slowly and fastidiously, he slides on his undershirt and buttons up his patterned shirt. He ties his matching cravat and steps over to hand Louis his now damp shirt before peeling off his wet drawers as Louis looks away. He understands now; Harry, with his terrible sense of balance, expects to end up in the water at some point during a race and has therefore learned to set aside dry clothes to change into. The walk back would probably have been even more uncomfortable in layers of sopping wet clothing.

Louis lets his eyes drift back cautiously, but it’s too soon: he sees Harry’s long, thick cock hanging between his pale thighs and dark bush of hair in the moment before he pulls his trousers up over it. Louis allows himself to see that it’s a big cock, even bigger than his own, and that’s after swimming in frigid water.

This is the moment when Louis realises that he’s not cold at all, anymore. He’s in an undershirt, hugging a damp shirt to his chest, and his blood is still thrumming hotly through his veins. This is the moment when Louis realises what he’d thought he’d smelled on the wind earlier. It wasn’t on the wind at all, it was coming from within, he sensed it with a sense that doesn’t have a name.

His rut is coming on soon.

\----

Louis spends the next several days trying to acquire information without asking for it. Back when he was at college, he was meant to pretend that his rut wasn’t happening, to keep a stiff upper lip and assume that those of the other students who were even aware of what he smelled like would keep a stiff upper lip about it as well. He knows that his alpha and omega elders go into seclusion for their respective ruts and heats. What he doesn’t know is, first, if he’s meant to go into seclusion, and second, what one is meant to do in seclusion.

He pays careful attention in his classes, trying to notice if any of the students are noticeably absent or whether any of them smells particularly strongly. He lingers after class and asks his English professor for a detailed description of the readings for the next week, in case he should fall ill. But his professor is a beta, of course, and doesn’t pick up on the nuance of his inquiry.

He starts leading conversations with his friends, such as, “Did you notice Graham Thorn’s absence all last week?” and “Do you ever just get sick of staring at the walls of your room?” They don’t lead anywhere helpful, though. Louis’s going to have to choose between attempting to attend class and being asked, mortifyingly, to leave, or staying behind from class and having the dean come banging on his door with questions.

Fortunately, he thinks on the night he gives up trying, he has some time to decide.

He tries to simply enjoy himself out by the bonfire past the river. He drinks more wine than usual, he even gulps down a burning swig of the whiskey that Baz brings, and soon he’s blissfully ignorant of anything his body has been trying to communicate to him.

Harry drinks a full bottle of wine and then starts another; Louis happens to notice this because he’s sitting directly across from him. Their eyes naturally fall on one another, often meeting over the fire. There’s something dark in Harry’s eyes tonight, and it serves as a burst of memory of what Louis’s trying to forget, so he finds himself running from that darkness, he finds himself avoiding Harry’s eyes. 

He does, however, track the darkening bruise-coloured stain on Harry’s lips as he sips and sips and sips. When Harry comes over to borrow Louis’s cigarette, it’s returned to him with purple traces all over the white paper.

Soon, Harry’s strewn across two bodies, his knees in Johnny Boy’s lap, his head lolling about on Don Juan’s as he stares at the stars. Frowning, Louis realises that his own head is resting listlessly on Sanders’s shoulder as though too heavy for his own neck. He and Harry should be propping one another up, he decides. They’re friends, after all, and somehow, it seems right that they should depend on one another.

Louis walks toward the other side of the circle and nearly steps in the fire, barely saved by Wellie’s hand, which darts out to pull him by the leg of his trousers.

“Thank you, thank you,” Louis says sincerely, bending down to focus on Wellie’s eyes and fiercely clasp his life-saving hand. Wellie giggles at him, leaning back against a shape that looks vaguely like Baz. It’s most likely Baz; Wellie’s always sitting beside him.

The group is buzzing with heated discussion of the merits and evils of condoms. Louis shakes his head to clear it, but it doesn’t work. Stepping more carefully on his way to Harry, he makes a clicking sound in the back of his throat, as he would to a horse, and Johnny Boy looks up at him, immediately lifting Harry’s limp knees off him and placing his feet on the ground. Louis sways and then takes the newly available space.

“Are you coming on Sunday?” Johnny Boy whispers, apparently taking Louis’s new seat as an invitation to converse.

Louis has no idea where anyone is going on Sunday, or if he does, he can’t remember. He closes his hand around Harry’s knee, propping it up at a higher angle. He remembers the thing he’s trying to forget and answers sullenly, “No, I’ll be too busy rubbing one out.”

Johnny Boy laughs as though it’s a clever joke instead of a sad reality. Louis blinks and stares into the fire to clear his vision, and then he leans to the side to pull Harry upright, one hand around his arm and the other tucked under his neck, where his pulse beats slow and thick. Harry is dead weight, but Don Juan helps push him up once he realises that Louis’s trying to free up his lap.

Harry, still apparently unaware of Louis’s presence, sighs happily into the shoulder that he’s deposited onto. It makes Louis oddly happy, this secret taste of Harry’s drunken breath. He wraps his arms around Harry’s ribcage and shifts so that their thighs are pressed together lengthwise.

Harry takes a deep breath in and startles awake, shaking his head with a pained sound. “We should take a swim,” he whines, before even opening his eyes. He breaks free of Louis’s grip to bend down with his elbows braced on his knees. Louis tries not to feel hurt, because that’s ridiculous, but he’s drunk. The plan was that they were going to lean on each other.

“A swim!” Don Juan echoes, who only gets louder with drink.

Harry lurches to his feet, slipping free of his braces and untucking his shirt already.

“It’s freezing!” Louis protests, the first objection that comes to mind to convince Harry to come sit by him once again.

“Last one standing gets to take home the rest of this bottle!” Don Juan shouts, holding up Baz’s bottle of whiskey.

Half the group, including Baz, starts running to the river. Harry stumbles toward it, too, until Sanders comes to help him walk straight. 

“What’s the matter, Tommo?” Jameson asks him as he walks past. “Not dark enough for you?”

Louis joins them in a moment, looking in the direction of his friends, who have all stripped their clothes in preparation for the plunge. He can’t tell anyone apart in this light, with the fire far away and the moon absent. He wants to know which of the vague shapes is Harry’s. He removes his shirt, his undershirt, and then his shoes and trousers. Someone makes a sound of surprise when he pushes down his drawers, but he knows it’s a bluff. Nobody can see him blushing, anyway.

“Aren’t you boys ever going to join me?” asks Harry’s voice from the centre of the river. Louis’s heart nearly stops, shocked that Harry had been there all along, relieved that there is a reason Louis didn’t spot him amidst the shadowy figures along the bank.

A series of splashes and hollers follows as many of the lads make their way into the water, and Louis jumps in before he can be left behind again.

The water is cold and instantly sobers him. When he surfaces, he struggles to breathe, his muscles seize up, and he has to plant his feet in the icy mud of the bank just to stay above the surface.

“Fuck this!” someone yells, a body crawling out of the water. Louis can make out Baz’s silhouette against the light of the fire beyond. Don Juan stands beside him, swigging from the whiskey bottle and laughing, completely clothed and dry. Anger surges in Louis’s chest before he tells himself that it’s uncalled for. He could have been clever enough to stay out of the water as well. 

Louis forces himself to remain in the river. He’s always had a stubborn streak, and he doesn’t really want anyone to see his silhouette, now that he’s seen how the fire highlights everyone’s body.

It takes another minute for the other boys to either get so cold that they give up or to see that they’re the subject of ridicule. Either way, they all end up slithering back to shore, sputtering curses. 

Rut or no rut, Louis’s shivering out of his skin as he watches the silhouettes put their clothes back on. It seems colder in the air than it does in the water at this point, so he’s putting off his emergence until the last possible moment. Some of the boys start running toward their halls with their clothes in hand; others slip on their drawers before sprinting away.

“I’ll take that bottle of scotch now,” Louis yells through chattering teeth. The liquor would probably help him warm up. With great effort, he pulls himself out of the water and onto the shore, sighing in relief.

Don Juan takes one more sip before handing the bottle to Louis. He stumbles as he does it, but Louis steps out of his way instead of helping to hold him upright. Then Don Juan saunters away toward the fire, singing a song that Louis doesn’t recognise.

He hears a movement in the water and spins around quickly, trying to locate the source.

It’s Harry.

Harry’s still in the water, treading steadily in the middle of the river, eyes closed and pointing up at the stars. Louis’s vision has adjusted enough to the dark to see it.

“Harry,” he calls, somewhere between worried and relieved—relieved that he didn’t unintentionally leave Harry out here all by himself.

Harry giggles into the night, sounding as though the water hasn’t sobered him up at all.

“You can come out now, you’ve won.”

Harry disappears under the water for a moment and comes back up, pushing his wet hair away from his face. He doesn’t show any signs of intending to leave.

“Have you decided to become a merman?” Louis asks teasingly, talking to Harry the way he talks to his little siblings.

“’S’clean in here,” Harry says through a pout that Louis can hear.

Louis raises his eyebrow at that claim but stays focused. “Come on, I’ve got your clothes here.” He scans the ground until he finds a pile of clothing. It’s his own clothing, but it has the same effect when he waves the shirt in the air.

Harry stays put, so Louis tries a different tactic. After all, Harry’s a caring, sympathetic creature at heart. “I won’t put my own clothes on until you get out of that water.”

Harry goes still, if it’s possible for an unmoving thing to go still. “That’s all right,” he says curiously.

Louis realises that Harry can see the silhouette of his body against the fire beyond, but he still can’t see Louis blush. Why should he even think that Harry’s statement had anything to do with looking at him? Harry’s probably just too drunk to care that his friend is freezing to death.

Louis drops his shirt onto the bank and sits down on top of it. “I suppose I’ll just freeze to death here, then,” he muses, allowing his teeth to chatter dramatically.

This spurs Harry into action, prompts him to surge up to the bank and Louis’s ankles with cold, wet hands. “No, don’t!” he cries, rather desperately.

“Then come out, already!” Louis argues.

Harry’s teeth gleam in the traces of firelight as he tugs on Louis’s ankles. “It’s warmer in here.”

Louis kicks free. “It’d be warmest if you let me take you to bed.”

Harry disappears under the surface again. It’s too many seconds before he comes back up; Louis counts them each.

When his head finally pops above the water, Louis decides that he’s had enough. He steps into the water to grab Harry by the shoulders, spin him around, and drag his body out.

“No,” Harry protests, kicking his feet futilely along the muddy bank as Louis heaves him ashore.

“No?” Louis echoes. He can’t believe that he’s the only one who stayed back long enough to ensure Harry neither drowned nor froze to death.

Once they’re ashore, Louis collapses in exhaustion, dropping Harry in the mud but holding him close enough that he doesn’t slide back into the water.

“Oh, no,” Harry whispers against Louis’s shoulder.

And just like that, Harry is on his feet, pulling on clothes over his wet, muddy skin.

Feeling left behind and far too sober, Louis grudgingly stands and reaches for his own clothes, but Harry finishes first and walks toward the fire. Louis grabs the bottle of whiskey once he’s done and follows him because he’s not sure of Harry’s ability to make it back to his room in one piece.

He passes the abandoned fire, which everyone has left to blaze into coals on its own time. “Hey!” Louis shouts ahead, running to catch up with Harry.

But Harry doesn’t stop.

Louis runs faster, eyes burning with frustration. When he thinks back on it, Harry has been acting avoidant of him all night, aside from when he was trying to lure him into the water. He wants to know _why_ , wants to know _why_ Harry is drowning himself in wine and dirty river water.

Finally, he catches up.

“Harry,” he pleads, holding out the whiskey bottle like some misguided peace offering for a war he doesn’t understand.

It smashes to the ground when Harry suddenly turns on his heel, grabs Louis by the shoulders, and backs him into the nearest tree with a jarring crash.

Louis’s hands brace instinctually against Harry’s chest, keeping him from bearing down, but Harry’s face leans into his neck all the same, the air gone stone-still and tense around them. Every hair on Louis’s body rises, and he realises, suddenly, why Harry’s been avoiding him all night.

“You’re going into rut,” Harry murmurs, dark and wet and all over Louis’s neck.

Louis’s skin prickles in terror, a strange mixture of sadness and excitement: he’s never been part of a territorial fight before, never been challenged like this, and even as his skin shudders with readiness, he wishes it wasn’t Harry. He doesn’t want Harry to need distance from him, but that’s just how things are.

“I’ve been smelling it on you all night,” Harry whispers, voice even lower, mouth breathtakingly close to Louis’s pulse.

Louis whimpers, feeling the effects of his rut starting to take hold of him, the tension surging beneath his skin, the growl deep in his throat, the fight in his blood. He doesn’t want this, not with Harry.

But the longer Harry stands there, breathing in Louis’s scent from the place beneath his ear, mouth dangerously close to Louis’s throat, the more Louis begins to feel like a trapped animal. Before he even thinks to, he brings his own hand up to Harry’s throat, wrapping it around his neck, digging into his pulse with his thumb. He tries to take deep breaths, tries to breathe through his nose to make his exhales less pungent. He’s sweating and grinding his teeth to dust, just waiting for Harry to make the first move.

Louis’s eyes water in relief-pleasure when Harry’s mouth finally descends, but—but he’s not biting. Harry’s mouth closes around his ear, wet and soft and breathing so heavily as Louis’s spine dissolves into a stream of shivers. He doesn’t know what to expect from his first fight, but this—this isn’t it. This can’t be right. He’s so terrified, every cell of his body excited.

“ _Knot my mouth_ ,” Harry hums against the spot just beneath Louis’s ear.

Louis’s knees give out, and Harry’s hands on his waist keep him pinned against the tree. “What?” he tries to ask, though it comes out more like a wordless gasp.

Harry is kissing Louis’s neck, sucking and licking down the length of it, and Louis is surging in so many directions, his hips straining into the air, his hand flexing deep into the muscle of Harry’s throat. Harry makes a pained sound, almost a hiccough. “ _Smell so fucking good, Louis_.”

It’s dark, but Louis’s vision is completely white behind his eyelids. _Harry_? Thinks he _smells good_? The way an _omega girl_ is meant to think? “ _Fuck_ ,” is what comes out in Louis’s voice, mostly a squeaking sound. His chest is constricted so tightly that it feels like air can’t escape.

His breath chokes him further with a hitching sob when he feels that his cock is painfully hard and leaking against his trousers.

“Please give it to me,” Harry pants, breath hot in Louis’s ear. “Wanna suck it, _please_.” Quickly, as though he’s just made up his mind, Harry moves his hands to the top of Louis’s trousers and reaches in searchingly, going still when he _touches_ Louis’s cock, hard and straining already, surging _painfully_ into the touch.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Louis hisses, blindly pushing Harry away with all his strength. With the distance, his vision comes back, and he can see Harry’s wine-red lips hanging open, can see Harry’s worried, drunken gaze scanning his face, unfocused.

“Louis,” Harry begs, reaching out and taking a step forward, but Louis turns and runs before he can hear another word. His cock aches with every step, but he has to get out of here, has to get away. He wipes away tears, of want or frustration or fear, as he runs. He doesn’t know if Harry’s simply incredibly drunk, or if this is all some sick part of the territorial rituals that occur between alphas. Does he have a lifetime of these mind games to look forward to, or is it just the particular illness of Cambridge boys with too much money and wine to burn in the forest every night unattended?

He runs up the stairs, clutching his muddy shirt and undershirt to cover the front of his trousers, though no one is up late enough to see him in his state of shame and confusion.

 _Smell so fucking good, knot my mouth._ Louis hears the words over and over again as he enters his room and dives into his bed. Whatever the intent, Louis can’t stop hearing them sincerely, can’t stop _thinking_ about them. Can’t sleep without tearing off his clothes and rutting down into the sheets. _Knot my mouth_. He doesn’t even let himself picture it until the very end, when his knot swells, brushing against the roughness of the linen, and he pictures Harry’s big, wet, bruise-coloured lips, and then remembers—so vividly it’s as if he’s feeling it for the first time—how infernally _soft_ his lips were on Louis’s neck.

Louis cries out, pulsing into the sheets more than he’s ever given before, blind with it, drunk with it, terrified.

After a long while, he cries in helpless frustration when he remembers that he left Harry alone out in the dark, and he hopes that he found his own way home. 

\----

Louis attends Latin in the morning, but the alpha three seats to his left keeps growling under his breath, and there are at least two omegas in the room who’ve gone slick. Louis can smell it, the hot bitter smells, can see Roger Kane squirming in his chair with his head bent decidedly down at his book. And Louis has never _thought_ about having that effect on male omegas before, and he doesn’t _want_ to, he doesn’t let himself even think about what Roger Kane could want from _him_ because before he even finishes asking himself the question, he’s thinking about _Harry’s lips wrapped tight and warm and wet around the dark swell of his knot_.

“Did Harry make it back to his room last night?” he whispers to Sanders.

Sanders keeps his head bowed, shrugging his shoulder and hissing back, “How in hell should I know?”

Louis excuses himself early from class, too irritable to be embarrassed that everyone surely knows why he’s storming out. He kicks the stone wall of the corridor three times after he’s left, hoping to combat his own frustration.

He picks some grass on his way to his hall, shoves the roots into his face and tries to smell it so deeply that it drowns out the scent of himself, the memory of last night’s confusion. He focuses on the green and tries to quell the rage, the want, beneath his skin.

He only realises that he’s heading to Harry’s hall several minutes after he’s passed his own, led by instinct. He knows where Harry lives, but he doesn’t know which room. He thinks he could smell his way there, but that’s too awful a thought.

“Which way is Harry Styles?” he asks a student even younger-looking than himself on his way through the corridor. He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off all the scents in the world.

The boy points past the stairs and down the corridor to the right, looking frightened, and Louis thanks him as politely as he can manage. He just needs to make sure that Harry made it back in one piece last night, then he can leave and hide himself away from everything but the interior of his own room’s walls.

Louis knocks on the door loudly enough to wake the devil, but there’s no answer.

He knocks again.

The door swings open, and Louis stumbles into the room with the force of his fist’s momentum.

Harry looks down at him, wide-eyed, his lips still stained from last night. Louis’s prick stiffens pathetically.

“You’re all right,” Louis observes. He doesn’t realise that he’s panting until the words come out distorted by breath.

Harry’s spine straightens visibly, and his eyes close, his lips part. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“ _I’m_ sorry,” Louis answers, without stopping to think. He just _is_ sorry.

They both go silent, and Louis drops his eyes to Harry’s chest, where his clean, white shirt isn’t quite buttoned. The window is open in Harry’s room, letting in the cold and all its golden, autumn light. The bed is unmade, as though Harry only recently rose from it. Everything smells like Harry.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Louis asks quietly.

“What?” Harry’s eyes dart to Louis’s, blazing so green that Louis can’t help meeting his gaze before looking down at Harry’s bare feet.

“The smell. Another alpha in your room. Your _territory_.” Louis’s voice breaks. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying, it’s as if the words are coming from some place inside him that he’s not in control of.

It sounds like _flirtation_. It’s terrifying, and Louis’s prick stiffens as his heart races.

Harry’s nostrils flare, and he takes a deep breath in before letting out a pained sigh. “I’m trying...been trying not to.”

“Not to…,” Louis repeats, leaving room for clarification. His heart feels like it’s about to burst. The divot of Harry’s sternum breaks out in sweat, and Louis’s mouth waters.

“Not to smell it.”

Harry drifts away, stepping back without seeming to take a step. Louis’s breath stops as he makes a fist in Harry’s shirt. “Smell what _?_ ” he whispers desperately.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Harry whines, collapsing into Louis’s shoulder and opening his mouth over the base of Louis’s neck. “Your rut.”

“Why?” Louis asks, taking two fistfuls of Harry’s shirt now, using it to leverage the rest of his way through the threshold, letting the door fall shut behind them. He grinds his teeth as he inhales the thick of Harry’s curls, which still smell like river and fire. “Does it make you want to fight me?”

Harry collapses, held up only by Louis’s grasp of his shirt. Louis holds on, experimentally, but Harry’s too heavy, so he releases him to the ground. And then Harry’s on his knees, swaying forward, eyes closed, looking drunk as he ever has. “No,” he gasps, rubbing his face against Louis’s hip.

“Fuck, Harry, you’re—,” Louis groans, pushing the hard line of his cock up against the rough wet of Harry’s open mouth. Even through the fabric, it’s so sweet that Louis’s eyes water. He shuts them against the tears.

Harry’s tongue flattens and drags over the material, caressing all the way to the head of Louis’s cock where it strains against his trousers and then wrapping around—

“ _Please_ ,” Louis squeaks, scraping his hand through Harry’s crispy, dried-river curls.

“What do you want?” Harry asks, his eyelashes fluttering against Louis’s trousers as they fall shut. Harry looks lost as he lets the broad swipe of his tongue press deep against Louis’s cock. He looks drunk. Louis just wants to give him more.

“Your mouth... _Harry,_ ” he gasps, and he can’t believe himself as he says the words. But he _does_ , he _wants it_.

Harry’s hands arrive at either side of Louis’s hips and take hold as Louis’s legs nearly give out. He tugs his own shirt out from his trousers, exposing a patch of skin that Harry’s mouth immediately latches onto. That tongue, that goddamned tongue slips down low, brushing blindly across the tip of Louis’s cock, making him cry out, feeling absolutely mad.

This is madness. It _must_ be madness. Harry’s hands on his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs with every inch of ground lost. The deep release when Harry’s hands slide his braces free, allowing his trousers to fall. Louis can’t breathe, and Harry’s hands are only _just_ sliding into his drawers, stroking and cupping and _holding him in place._ If Louis had been asked to imagine this yesterday, he would have laughed. Now, he’s straining against Harry’s hands, mere moments away from releasing all over Harry’s face.

But Harry’s mouth takes in his cock— _takes in his cock—_ so surely, so calmly, even as it calls upon Louis to burst apart at the seams. Louis is at the mercy of Harry’s hand and his mouth, at the dirty place where they meet midway down his cock. Harry’s lips wrap around the head where he’s most sensitive, his tongue laps at him up and down while Louis looks at the ceiling, the back of his skull slamming against Harry’s wall.

Louis is sure that no one on earth has ever felt anything so sweet, so delicate, so wet and strong. He lets Harry’s free hand hold his hip against the wall, and then he breathes in the scent, the scent of—

Another alpha’s arousal.

He groans as Harry’s mouth pulls off his cock, leaving him wet and hard in the cold air, but then Harry’s lips find him again, lower, low, the place where his knot forms, as though Harry has _imagined_ it, imagined just what part of Louis’s flesh would swell and darken. He sucks and licks hard, drawing blood to the surface, sapping the energy from Louis’s entire body to inhabit that one patch of skin where Harry’s lips work him over.

Harry pulls off again, with a gasp. “Fuck my mouth,” he begs, terrible and dark, before closing his too-tight, too-wet mouth around half of Louis’s cock. He sounds so desperate for it, and Louis feels so desperate for it, and he can’t tell what’s what and who’s who, so he just takes Harry’s head between his hands and tries to press deeper into that mad, sucking heat.

It must not be good enough, though, because Harry pulls Louis by the hips, pulling him in steadily so that Harry’s throat—his _throat—_ can open up around his cock, fluttering and hotter than anything Louis has ever dared to imagine. Hotter, even, than his mouth had been on Louis’s neck, last night. His nose presses into Louis’s pelvis, and Louis shudders in revulsion to think of what Harry smells, shudders in ecstasy and shock to think that Harry breathes it in deeply, satisfied.

“ _Ah_ ,” Louis cries out, making a fist in the flesh of Harry’s shoulder as Harry’s lips reach his _knot_ and _slide right over it_. Harry makes a choked moan, his tongue lashing over across the swelling trapped in his mouth.

Louis’s eyes water freely. He’s never felt anything close to the heat he feels when Harry sucks around his heavy mouth- and throat-ful, tugging on Louis’s knot with those terrible lips, choking around the sensitive head of Louis’s cock and whining desperately through his nose against the hair on Louis’s pubic bone. He can’t believe it feels so good.

“My knot’s in your mouth,” Louis announces, too amazed to know if it’s for Harry’s benefit or if it’s to help himself believe it. “I’ve knotted your mouth.”

“ _Hmnh,”_ Harry whines around him. Louis forces himself to open his eyes, but the sight of Harry’s mouth wrapped wantonly around his cock, lips stretched obscenely wide over his knot, brow furrowed too deeply for his expression to be categorised, is too much. He clutches Harry’s shoulder and squeezes, digging his nails in as though he can stop himself from falling over the edge. He wants, he wants, he _wants_.

Harry’s lips and tongue work his knot deeply, savagely, and Louis climaxes silently, pushing his cock deeper in, filling Harry’s throat with his seed, _fucking it into him._ And keeping it there. Harry’s lips slide off with a tangible _pop_ , his hand forming a ring around Louis’s knot as he keeps trying to draw more out of him, though Louis doesn’t feel like he has any more to give. Harry suckles on the tip, squeezes around his knot, and Louis watches himself spill more white across the red of Harry’s tongue.

He whimpers and swallows as if it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, and Louis spurts out even more.

Harry holds him, quiet and still, in the gentle pressure of his palm. It isn’t until Harry looks up to meet his gaze that Louis feels the tears at the corners of his eyes. His breath hitches as Harry’s eyes blaze through him, his pupils as black and wide as they were last night.

Some more fluid dribbles out from the tip, and Harry’s mouth follows to lick it up. The sight of Harry’s lips sullied by his cock, perfectly matching in colour, completely unimaginable, makes Louis collapse down onto his knees. Kneeling face to face with Harry, Louis takes a deep, steadying breath only to belatedly notice that he can taste himself on Harry’s breath, mingled with the taste of Harry’s own scent.

He sits back on his heels. “Fuck,” is the only word that comes out.

“I can do it again, if you like,” Harry croaks, his voice solemn, matter-of-fact, scraped rough. He just had Louis’s cock in his throat. 

Louis’s spent prick twitches painfully at the thought, reminding him to tuck it back away. When he peeks out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Harry looking at the wooden floor, instead of at the thing that was just in his mouth moments ago. The sight makes Louis feel an acute pang of worry, like something is wrong with him. Why would he expect Harry to be looking at him?

 _Because he sucked on your cock like it was the best thing he’s ever swallowed_ , he thinks hotly, tucking the front of his shirt into his trousers as best he can and trying to tuck away his confusion as well.

But Harry Styles is such a confusing, wonderfully strange boy. “Why?” Louis asks, apparently still limited to monosyllabic words. He doesn’t think he could make Harry do it again unless he understood.

Harry laughs at that, the rough catch of his voice making Louis’s stomach drop out from under him. His laughter spills across the distance between them, smelling like Louis’s rut, his selfishness and madness, none of his kindness. “Maybe I like being useful,” Harry scrapes out.

It’s only now that Louis notices the line of Harry’s hard prick in his trousers, less than an inch away from where Harry’s twitching fingers lie, clearly holding back from touching. Louis wonders if he’s meant to leave, to let Harry go about his business.

But he _has_ to know.

“You enjoy it?” he asks, quiet as a whisper but not as easy to take back.

The rings on Harry’s fingers shimmer in the sunlight as he fidgets. He takes deep, steady breaths through his nose, for which Louis is immediately grateful before he remembers Harry’s words, _“I’m trying...been trying not to.”_ And Louis had _pressed_ on that weakness, selfishly needing to know what would happen.

“Maybe,” Harry repeats stubbornly. With a shrug, he adds, “Either way, it doesn’t say anything about you.”

Louis feels very strongly that all of this, everything he has been slowly discovering since meeting Harry, says very much about him indeed, and he’s dying to know what, even as he’s terrified. “What do you mean?” he protests weakly. His knees are starting to ache, so he slides fully onto the floor, leaning back against the wall.

“For all you know, it could be some omega girl’s mouth,” Harry explains, sounding suspiciously like he’s said the words before, like he’s had practice convincing someone on this subject.

“But it’s not,” Louis points out. The sunbeam through the window is starting to shine on him, making him sweat except for where Harry’s shadow cools him.

Harry gives him a cautious glance. “I won’t tell anyone.”

It hits Louis like a threat and like a promise of warm, dark secrets. Obviously, no one can know about what’s just transpired, about what might happen again. Louis even doubts most people’s ability to believe it. His cock was the one in Harry’s mouth, and he hardly believes it, wouldn’t believe it but for the sore twitching against his thigh every time Harry exhales.

He just wants to _understand_.

“Do you really like the way I—it— _smells_?”

For the first time in what feels like ages, Harry really _looks_ at him, studying his expression. Louis wonders what he sees there, if it’s obvious that he wants to lodge himself deep in Harry’s throat and fill him up with his scent if it’s really so good.

“What would you do if I said yes?” Harry asks, genuine curiosity in his voice. Louis wants to know what Harry imagines him doing. Surely he can’t imagine that Louis would be violent.

“Well,” Louis says, carding his fingers through his own hair, trying to bring sensation back to his muddled brain. He doesn’t know what he would do with such a confirmation, but he knows what he would _not_ do. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Harry’s green eyes waver for a long moment before dropping to the ground. He reaches for the open neck of his shirt, twirling the material around a single long finger. “I’m not like other alphas,” he admits, and it sounds like the start to a longer sentence that he doesn’t get around to finishing.

Louis sits there a moment, studying the dark flutter of Harry’s eyelashes, the twitch in the muscles of his jaw. More than anything else in this moment, he wants Harry to feel good. “The other lads, Don Juan seems to—” 

“That’s different,” Harry interjects. His fingers clench tightly around the button he’d been loosely twisting. “Don Juan’s different, _Baz_ is different.”

Louis feels wretched for upsetting his friend when he meant to console him. He refrains from expressing his surprise at the mention of Baz’s name, and in the moment he takes for silent reflection, he realises that he’s known for some time that Baz has an unnaturally close bond with Wellie. But could it really be that unnatural? An alpha and an omega? Why did Harry seem so defensive and judgmental?

“Yes,” he agrees, trying to mellow his voice to calm the mild tremor in Harry’s shoulders. Louis can smell his anger and his weakness, and he wants it closer. Slowly, he reaches out, touching his hand to the back of Harry’s fist before allowing it to unfurl and hold the clench of it. Harry’s chest rises beneath their joined hands, and Louis’s arm strains from stretching across the distance. He watches his hand run white, skin taut over Harry’s broad, scraped knuckles. The sight of his own blood draining makes it feel as though it’s all running to his groin. “You’re not like other alphas,” he says, as softly as he can manage with how hot his blood is running.

“M’not,” Harry’s voice breaks, and Louis can’t tell if it’s cracked from frustration, fear, or the ghost of Louis’s cock in his throat, or if he’s feeling the same want that Louis’s feeling. 

Louis wants for them to be feeling the same thing. He’s never felt such a strong connection to any person before, and he’s starting to realise that might mean something. “I think I’m not like other alphas, either.” He’s breathless as he says it, and he’s not sure what he means, only that he means it. Then, he smiles. “Harry,” he adds, hoping that Harry remembers that first night as vividly as he does, remembers telling Louis, _Only idiots call me Styles_ , the first moment when Louis felt that he and Harry had their own private friendship.

With his eyes still lowered, Harry sends out his free hand and lets it fall on Louis’s, which is braced on his thigh. Harry’s right hand clenches under Louis’s left, and Louis’s right hand flattens under Harry’s left. Louis can taste the faintness of Harry’s smile, it’s so close.

“So,” Harry says, his voice leading. Putting some of his weight into it, Harry slides their joined hands up, up, and over the rough wool of Louis’s trousers, just beside the line of his fully recovered prick. Louis bucks up off the floor into the pressure of his own palm with a gasp. “You want me to, again?”

“Now?” Louis asks.

“I’ve got nowhere to be, and neither have you.”

“How do you know that?” Louis lets Harry’s hand press his into a curl around the head of his cock, hissing at the sensation.

“Your rut’s started. No one will expect you to leave your room.”

Louis laughs at that, looks up at the ceiling, and lets the tight air in his chest fall out of him. After all his fruitless seeking, he finally got the information he needed from a boy who’s kneading his cock through his pants.

“What are you laughing at?” Harry asks, though there’s a thick smile in his voice.

Not wanting to let Harry in on his secret, Louis chooses to say, “Well, I’m not _in_ my room, am I?”

“You’re in _mine,”_ Harry agrees, his voice gone gruff in a way that Louis hasn’t heard yet. His eyes slide shut and he releases his hold on the hand at Harry’s collar. He needs it to push against the floor, the better to leverage his weight to rut up against the pressure on his swelling cock. With the space between them more open, Harry leans forward, pressing his face against Louis’s neck the way that he did earlier this morning, the way that he did last night. “You can stay here all week...I’ll bring you food.” A wordless groan comes out of Louis’s throat. Under the pressure of Harry’s hand, he tries to push down his trousers to expose his cock to the touch of bare skin.

“I’ll take care of you,” Harry adds, low and raw because Louis _fucked his throat_. Louis’s vision goes white again, lost in the heavenly oblivion of Harry’s words because they’re _so wrong_ —something an alpha would say to his possession, to his omega—but Louis’s the one in his rut, while Harry just sits there and _lets him_ , lets him swell and twitch under the weight of his hand, lets him spill across the spread of his tongue.

He forces himself to open his eyes until his vision focuses again. Harry looks almost smug but needy just the same, and it does something to Louis’s gut that he cannot name. “I’ll knot your mouth,” he exhales, and Harry’s eyes flutter shut in response, thumb stretching out and brushing across the bared, raw tip of Louis’s cock. “Just like you need,” Louis finishes, in awe of the fact that this could somehow be a fair exchange. But he _knows_ that it is, he can feel it in the tremor hidden in Harry’s weight bearing down on him.

“ _Yes.”_ Harry swoops in terribly close, and Louis’s heart stops at the terrible promise of his breath so near, but then Harry drops to the floor, splaying out on his elbows and stomach, spreading Louis’s legs with his shoulders. Louis pulls his cock free and holds it close to Harry’s mouth, watching and sweating and _watching_ Harry’s obscene, gorgeous mouth prepare to close around him.

Driven by something even baser, Louis moves his cock away from Harry’s descending mouth and rubs the length of it across his face instead. Harry hasn’t shaved this morning, and it scratches, painful and satisfying and driving him mad. The black, huge spread of Harry’s pupils when his eyes blaze open sends a whine from his throat and through his teeth. He wants Harry to _smell like him_.

He doesn’t even form a knot this time, he just surges in his own hand, spreading his seed all over Harry’s jaw, neck, and searching lips. He closes his eyes and floats in what feels like spun gold for what seems like minutes on end, twitching occasionally in the loose hold of Harry’s hot, greedy mouth.

“Just give me a few minutes,” Louis laughs once he’s collected enough breath to speak. He _will_ hold up his end of the bargain.

When he opens his eyes, though, he sees Harry, face covered in traces of him, biting his lip in what looks like pain but only for a moment before that look bursts into one of ecstasy, and only then does Louis notice his shoulder straining as his arm works beneath him, reaching into the darkness of his propped-up hips. His small, flat arse is making circles in the air as he spills, presumably, all over his hand and the floor beneath them, and Louis licks his lips as he watches it move without a single thought in his mind.

Harry’s face is red and covered in sweat, smeared with golden sunlight when he lays his wiped-clean hand down and settles deeply into the floor once again. He nudges Louis’s still half-hard cock with the messy side of his face. “I’m ready,” he pants, and Louis believes him. 

It’s going to be a very long week, but at least Louis won’t be spending it alone.

\---

When Harry goes out for supper, Louis tries to read but can’t. He paces from wall to wall of Harry’s room, turning so fast at each corner that he’s got blisters on the soles of his bare feet. He thinks, and he thinks, and he thinks some more. He thinks about how no one ever told him that such a thing is possible, that a man like Harry could desire a man like him. He thinks about how he can pick out the scent of Harry’s curls, how he has memorised the contour of Harry’s spine from sight alone, how he has spent hours trying to place the exact colour of Harry’s eyes, how his heart races so particularly every time he makes Harry’s lips curve into a shapely smile. He thinks about how no one ever told him that a man like him could desire a man like Harry.

He throws himself onto Harry’s bed and breathes from his pillow, desperate to examine what exactly it is that he feels in response to the scent of Harry’s curls. His examination ends the second he inhales, though, because his hips start instantly grinding his cock down against the mattress. He barely manages to resist coming apart, breaking away from the bed entirely and sticking his head directly out the window to take gasping breaths of the cold, clean night air.

Louis calms down once he finds the cigarettes on Harry’s shelf. He’s smoking one out the window when he smells Harry arrive just beneath where he’s sitting. Harry still smells like _him_. He’s been out in the world smelling like _him_. The thought scares him only as much as it arouses him and warms him enough to combat the chill.

“Hi,” Harry calls, casting his voice up toward Louis in the faint light. He can make out the waving of his pale hand.

Louis blows out a puff of smoke. He feels clean, after. Maybe how Harry had felt clean in the river last night.

“Won’t you come in?” Louis asks, his voice sounding less confident than intended.

A couple of minutes later, Harry comes into the room and joins Louis at the window, leaning his elbows on the sill beside his.

“Did anyone smell me on you?” Louis asks. His voice breaks as he tries to bring the cigarette to his lips, as Harry leans in to pluck it from his fingers; he doesn’t know what he wants the answer to be. Everything is normal with his head sticking out the window, breathing in tobacco, but he can’t do that all night. When he goes back into the room, he’s going to have to face Harry and everything they’ve done, everything they _will_ do.

Harry takes a drag, exhales, and Louis breathes in smoke. “Trust me, everyone’s too far up their own arse to bother.”

Louis bites his lip, shifting his weight into the hip that’s farther from Harry. His confession erupts from his lips before he’s even planned to let it slip: “When we first met, I’d hoped you were an omega.” He’s not even sure what that _means_ , it’s just the truth.

He dares not look over at Harry, but he sees the red glow of the cigarette flare as Harry breathes in deeply. He lets Harry place it back in his hand, a useless stub now. “I didn’t hope that _you_ were,” Harry says evenly.

Louis can smell the scent of Harry’s curls and turns his head away. “Did you bring me any food?”

“Yes.” Harry doesn’t move. Louis doesn’t either. After a minute, Harry adds, “It would be easier if I _was_. You could treat me like a piece of furniture, have your way with me in the night and never look me in the eye during the day. You could tell the other alphas how pathetic I was when I begged for your knot and then silently slide into my room every night.”

Louis slowly crushes the last of the cigarette to dust between his fingers as he listens. It’s so hard to think, his mind raging with the ghost of the memory of the scent of Harry’s curls. “Is that what Baz does to Wellie?” he manages to ask, straining to connect his thoughts. All he knows is that Harry’s passionate about whatever it is that they’re talking about.

There’s a rustle, and then Harry is bringing out a loaf of bread. He extends it toward Louis in offering, and Louis takes it, barely managing to pull a piece off to bite instead of sinking his teeth straight into the loaf. “It’s what _all_ alphas do to omegas,” he hears Harry say, past the wet sound of his own mouth chewing. “Well, the alpha _men_ , anyway. They don’t respect omegas whether they’re men or women or anything in between. The women just have the dubious honour of getting to build homes with them.”

“With _us_ ,” Louis corrects as he chews. Every time he has met an omega girl or woman, he has been unable to feel anything but the protection he has for his little sisters. In the past, he has taken some comfort in this fact, since it suggests that he’ll never be a brute of a husband. But perhaps it suggests more than that.

“Not with me,” Harry says quietly.

“Right, you’re _different_ ,” Louis recites, a repetition from the afternoon that he can hardly remember through a haze of want and pleasure. “ _We’re_ different.”

Seemingly out of nowhere, but probably from the same bag that the bread came from, an opened bottle of wine appears in front of his face. “I do hope so.”

When Louis gets a whiff of Harry’s scent, he drops his bread to the floor and pushes the bottle straight out of Harry’s hand to smash upon the ground beneath the open window. He just _wants him_. And Harry will _let him_.

As the glass breaks, Louis turns, grabbing Harry’s waist in the clutch of his hands. “We’re different,” he repeats against Harry’s face, already panting. Harry looks gaunt in the soft light of the candle that Louis lit when the sun went down. Louis feels compelled to recall all the hours he’s spent trying to reconstruct the memory of Harry’s face in the night, but it’s easier to just close his eyes and let his lips graze Harry’s jaw.

Without another word, Harry drops to his knees and sucks Louis’s cock deep and wet until Louis’s cries are spilling out through the window, joining the splatter of wine and broken glass on the ground beneath.

\---

In the dark, sometime past midnight, Louis is trying and failing to sleep. The scent in the air is smothering his skin like a second layer of sweat. Harry is lying in the same bed, close enough that every time Louis shifts position, he shifts against Harry’s body in five places before settling as far away as possible.

Louis is achingly hard just from listening to the sound of Harry’s breaths, imagining how they would feel because he _knows_ how they would feel.

If there’s a change in the air, Louis doesn’t feel it. One second, they’re lying tense and still on opposite sides of the bed, and in the next second, Harry’s turning and shuffling closer, inch by inch, as if to give Louis enough time to push him away. Louis does not push him away.

In the safe quiet under the duvet, Harry pushes Louis’s nightshirt up as far as it will go and latches his mouth to the divot at the centre of Louis’s ribcage, above the hollow of his trembling stomach. His hair tickles Louis’s chest as he kisses his way down Louis’s abdomen. It feels frighteningly like the most intimate thing they’ve done.

Alarmed by this revelation and trying to regain some control over his vulnerability, Louis forces out a quiet laugh and asks, “Can’t get enough of it, can you?”

Harry moans hungrily, but the sound is muffled by Louis’s skin, so Louis parts his knees, making room for Harry to lie between them. It feels absurdly natural for Harry to be there, shoulders pressing into Louis’s thighs, tongue trailing dangerously close to the hot line of Louis’s cock where it rests on his stomach. “Right where you belong,” Louis sighs, sinking his fingers into Harry’s curls and pushing his mouth to the base of Louis’s cock, where his pliant lips wrap easily. Louis _loves_ this, loves the attentiveness of Harry’s tongue at this part of himself that used to have no meaning, loves the feeling of Harry predicting his body’s reaction and deliberately manifesting that reaction with his supple mouth. It’s only been a day, and Louis feels like a fundamentally changed person, like a part of him has been brought to life. From now on, he’ll forever be someone whose knot is at home in Harry Styles’s mouth.

With one of Harry’s hands clutched in the flesh of Louis’s stomach and the other cradling and rubbing firmly up against his sac, the only way to get more of his cock in that perfect hot mouth is to move it himself. He holds Harry up by the grip in his hair and wraps his hand around the curve of his shaft, feeling the wetness from Harry’s mouth where his knot has started to form. “Do you want it?” Louis asks, genuinely wondering if this is what Harry’s after.

Harry’s saliva drips onto his tip, sliding down his slit, strangely cool on his fever-hot skin. “Yes,” is his answer, and he sounds like he means it.

With a drowning gasp, Louis feeds Harry his cock, revelling in each slow inch of the slide in a way that he was unable to focus on any other time today. He releases his handful of curls when Harry coughs around him, but Harry keeps him inside, dragging his tongue up to the flare of the crown and back down. His mouth feels softer than before, and Louis feels a curl of heat low and deep when he realises that Harry’s mouth must be _swollen_ —terribly swollen—from how much Louis has been using it all day long. The thought is just as arousing as it is alarming, but the fact that it’s arousing is itself arousing.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Louis says, voice whining as he tries to hold back from moving at all.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Harry’s mouth slides off. Louis sighs in abrupt disappointment and relief because he thinks that Harry’s choosing not to continue, but Harry puts his lips right against Louis’s slit and hoarsely whispers, “You’re not hurting me.” Not a second later, Harry’s mouth sinks back down his length. It’s a maddening amount of pressure, and the suction as he draws up again brings tears to Louis’s eyes. He’s grateful to the dark for making him realise that the image of Harry’s cheeks hollowed around him is already familiar and easily recalled.

Harry keeps making little grunts of frustration when Louis’s cock reaches his throat, and Louis thinks he knows what the sounds mean, thinks he knows what Harry wants. After this morning, this afternoon, and this evening, he has begun to realise that he understands Harry better than he ever knew. He remembers the words Harry used this morning and asks something that Louis could only bring himself to ask in the dark. “You want me to fuck it? Fuck your mouth?”

Harry makes a sound like crying and tries to force his throat open deeper around Louis’s cock. Tentatively, Louis feels his way to Harry’s head and pets the sweat-dampened curls off the back of his neck. “Can you breathe?” Harry makes a sound of assent and nods, the motion of it jostling Louis’s cock against his throat. “If you can’t breathe…,” Louis goes on, trying to think quickly because he very badly wants to shove his way deep into Harry the way he did this morning, but this morning, he could see Harry’s facial expressions. “Strike me, right here, if you can’t breathe,” he whispers, taking Harry’s hand and pressing it to his hip. Harry squeezes the flesh and swallows greedily around a long moan, sending pleasure surging up into Louis’s spine.

With his hand holding Harry’s head still, Louis arches up, sliding deeply and slowly until Harry’s lips brush up against the swelling at the base. “That’s so good,” Louis marvels aloud. Moving carefully, he slides part of the way back out, groaning at the drag and the pressure and the slackened caress of Harry’s lips. Louis wants to give Harry his knot again.

He shoves in a little more sharply this time and drags slowly back out, trying to give Harry time to breathe in between. Louis’s only moments away from completely losing his mind, and he wants to make sure that Harry’s safe while he’s still relatively sane.

Each of Harry’s sputters and coughs is followed by an appreciative moan, encouraging Louis to push deeper. Louis desperately focuses on the gentle grazing of Harry’s fingertips up and down the expanse of his hip. He’s not sure if he simply finds the sensation soothing, or if he’s nervously attuned to the slightest change in movement that could be perceived as Harry striking him. Regardless, it’s a safer sensation to focus on than the obscene fluttering of Harry’s throat around the head of his cock. “So good,” Louis whines, grinding his head against the pillow that smells like Harry’s curls. “Gonna give it to you,” he promises, too far gone to specify what is it that he will give.

Everything’s sopping wet; Harry’s lips keep losing their tight seal, and saliva is dripping freely down to collect in the palm he has pressed against Louis’s heavy, throbbing testicles. It’s so wet that it barely takes any extra force to slide his knot sweetly past the crest of Harry’s _teeth,_ his lips suddenly finding the strength to seal tighter than ever before.

Louis can’t speak anymore, his voice desert-dry from the heat of Harry around him, the heat of Harry’s desperate slurping sounds. Louis focuses on Harry’s fingers brushing against his hip and grinds filthily up, up, up into that perfect mouth.

He feels the tug of his climax and shoves in as deeply as he can, wanting to fill Harry up and keep his seed in him, wanting to be trapped by the seal of Harry’s mouth around his knot. It feels blindingly good, like everything is right where it belongs, surging far down Harry’s fucked-open throat and stretching Harry’s jaw apart with the fat swell of his knot. And Harry has no choice but to let it come down his throat, Harry _wants_ to let it come down his throat, Harry squeezes his sac like he wants to draw out _more_.

After just the second pulse of Louis’s climax, Harry’s hand slaps his hip and Louis instantly lets go of Harry’s head and tries to pull out, pulsing more in the second that it takes Harry to pry his clamped jaw open far enough to release him. Louis tries to pull out completely, but Harry holds him still, coughing wetly all around Louis’s spurting tip, tapping his tongue against the slit in the seconds that he’s not choking, collecting everything in his softly opened mouth, _right where it belongs_.

Louis is still dripping out occasional aimless pulses when he decides that he needs Harry _closer_. He uses his legs on either side of Harry’s shoulder to knock him down flat on his back and then straddles his torso, hunching over to—well, to _feel_ the sticky wet coating Harry’s mouth, but he wants to feel it _with his mouth_. He hovers there, breathing on Harry, stilled not by what he wants to do but by the word for it: he wants to _kiss_ Harry.

He doesn’t get the chance to because Harry pulls him down to kiss _him first,_ bitter and too-wet. It’s both the fiercest and the softest thing that Louis has ever felt, and he feels himself melting into it, all of his soul pouring into Harry’s mouth like so much thawed ice.

He’s so lost in the sensation of being held so close and tight, of drowning in the caress of Harry’s lips that it takes him some time to recognise the feeling at his lower back. The hot line of Harry’s prick against his skin, where Harry’s hips curl to cradle the spread of Louis’s thighs. The material of their nightshirts shifts with each twist of Harry’s hips, brushing his cock against Louis’s backside. Louis moans into their kiss when he realises that Harry’s moving like that because it feels good to him, that he’s taking his pleasure just rubbing against Louis’s skin as they kiss. 

The bitterness in Harry’s mouth has given way to something deeper, more intoxicating. It’s _Harry’s_ taste, Louis realises, and he wants _more_. He pulls free of the kiss to kneel further down on the bed, face level with the place where Harry’s cock lies, a palpable source of heat amidst the rumpled soft linen of his nightshirt. Harry starts whining like a dog before Louis even gets him in hand, a high-pitched whistle scraping out of his ruined throat. Louis finds it in the dark and wraps his fingers around the thick, foreign blood-heat of another alpha’s cock. Before he can lose his nerve, he slides up to locate the tip with his thumb and brings a kiss of his lips to the slit, shivering with the scald of its wet smear across his tongue.

Harry’s hips buck wildly once, twice, almost twisting away from Louis’s loose hold, and then a thick spurt erupts violently into Louis’s mouth, shocking him into coughing as though he’s breathed in water. He pulls away, catching his breath, letting pulse after pulse land on his face, slip down his hand. Harry lies deathly still and silent. Louis counts each surge of his cock under the curled palm of his hand instead of heartbeats. _Right where I belong_ , he thinks, finally calming his throat enough to kiss the tip of Harry’s cock again, suckling out the last of it. He hardly got a fraction of Harry’s cock in his mouth, and he’s absolutely _moved_ by the thought of how much of his that Harry could swallow down.

Louis crawls back up for more of Harry’s kisses, curious what they feel like when neither of them is hard, and he finds that they feel almost exactly the same: all-consuming, world-changing. Harry licks his way across Louis’s face, blindly chasing his own taste until he’s clean. Louis feels like he should say something, but no words seem big enough for everything that he has just felt in the dark. Without saying anything, he falls asleep in Harry’s arms, listening to the sounds of his strained breaths.

\---

The next day, lying in bed with a cigarette in his hand, Harry tells him, “No one’s ever done that...what you did, I mean.”

Louis inches closer, pressing his front up against Harry’s side. He’s restless and eager for more, burning in the afternoon warmth now that Harry has returned from class, but a strain of smug possessiveness curls in his lungs like smoke and drags him down to stillness. “Done what?” he asks, blushing before he’s even said it. “Tied your mouth?”

Harry’s fingers stop fiddling. “Erm, no, actually.” His voice is still wrecked from the day before. “I meant that no one has ever touched me like you did.”

Louis forces his hand to lie still on Harry’s abdomen instead of curling deep and needy into his shirt. His vision goes red at the thought of Harry having had other alphas in his mouth besides him, but he knows that it’s irrational for him to be surprised. Surely, he had known already, somewhere in the back of his mind. “Who…,” he pauses to clear his throat, staring blankly at the smoke trailing from Harry’s fingers. “Who have you…,” but he can’t bring himself to finish the question. He can’t tell if Harry has gone tense under his touch, or if it’s just his touch that’s gone tense. 

“No one who mattered,” Harry murmurs, voice dark and careful, the way that he’s talked to Louis for the better part of their friendship. Louis wonders which one of them it is that Harry is treating so carefully. “No one who kissed me,” he adds in a slightly higher pitch.

Louis’s mind races quickly through all the alphas they’re friends with, his blood racing in confused rage for anyone who would touch Harry—or _not_ touch Harry—or dare to touch what’s his—or dare to hurt his friend. He closes his eyes, frustrated with all the thoughts spinning in his head that don’t seem to be his at all. He wishes he could tell which ones were.

“I like kissing you,” he forces out, because the only truths he can settle on happen to be the most painfully vulnerable ones. He decides to reward himself by opening his eyes long enough to steal Harry’s cigarette. For weeks now, they’ve been doing this, putting their lips on the same square inch of paper, stealing traces of the other’s taste. Louis wonders if Harry has known all along that that’s what they were doing.

Harry turns his head with a cheeky smirk on his face, making Louis’s blood rush in the best, most natural way. He tries to blow all his smoke into Harry’s face, but Harry sucks it out of him instead, sliding his tongue in and licking places where Louis has never been licked before.

\---

“Did they treat you very poorly, the other… the ones who didn’t kiss you?” Louis asks on the third day. The fever in his blood has cooled enough that he can think without pacing, and he has thought enough to realise that it matters very much to him that Harry feels safe around him.

Harry rests his head on Louis’s thigh, trailing his fingers through the coarse hairs at the very top of it, the place where Louis’s sweat is only just starting to cool. Harry’s face is easiest to read by candlelight; the shadows highlight the furrows of doubt on his brow and the speculative divot in the centre of his cheek. “They pretend it never happened, I mean, they still treat me as an equal. It’s an easily overlooked secret, same as any other.”

Louis mindlessly slides his own fingers into the dark nest of his own curls, beside Harry’s hand. He tries to speak as carefully as Harry does. “And that’s… good?”

Harry pouts thoughtfully. His lower lip is swollen thick, and Louis knows now what it would feel like between his teeth. “It’s more than they offer the omegas they fuck, I suppose. With me, they think I’m just confident and easy-going. With _them_ , they see it as a character flaw.”

Louis grinds his teeth. Harry is _so much more_ than confident and easy-going. He’s complicated, beautiful, glittering, silly, full of life. It sickens Louis to think of anyone— _Don Juan? Jameson? doesn’t matter_ —taking Harry for granted. His mouth floods with the desire to make Harry feel taken care of, to make Harry feel coveted, seen, protected, loved.

By candlelight, Louis learns how wide he can open his throat, how far he can stretch his jaw, how Harry sounds when he cries Louis’s name.

\---

There’s a heavy rain that weekend, and Harry stays out too late in it. The rain drops pound incessantly against Harry’s window like a barrage of stones, threatening to crack the glass, and Louis’s starting to go mad with worry and want. He loathes the thought of Harry no longer wanting his company now that his rut has faded to what feels like a gentle tide in a powerful sea of longing. He wants to stay in Harry’s room forever. He wants Harry in _his_ room. He wants Harry close by, even out in the world, the way that they’ve always been, meeting eyes over a blazing fire, the last two fools to stay in the river. Surely if they can do such things amongst their friends, it can’t be unreasonable to want it to go on forever. 

Louis puts on Harry’s clothes and walks through the rain until he finds a flicker of light in the window of the library. He moves toward the front door, but he’s stopped by a hand on his chest. Somehow he knows that it’s Harry who’s touching him, Harry who’s dragging him by the front of his shirt into the shadows of the stone archway. Louis smiles as Harry presses close, his face warming up in pleasure at the knowledge that this is the first time they’ve been this close out in the world.

But his smile evaporates the second that he hears the rough tears in Harry’s voice: “You left.”

Louis can’t smell either of them, everything drowned out by the rain and the wine on Harry’s breath. He’s completely disoriented, cast out of the heaven of their scents mingled together and being accused of things that don’t make sense. “ _You_ left,” he sputters, trying to regain some balance, resting his hands on Harry’s waist. He wishes he could see Harry’s face.

“Why are you here?” Harry asks, dropping his head onto Louis’s shoulder. Louis hadn’t realised how little Harry had been drinking the past few days, hadn’t thought about what it meant, that he could be some kind of replacement for liquor. Louis slides one of his hands up to hold the back of Harry’s neck, trying to sense some kind of truth with the skin of his palm.

“I came looking for you,” Louis says, attempting to exude more level-headedness than he’s feeling. “I thought you’d broken into the library...saw the light up there.”

Harry sways on his feet. “I was...the others are still.” Louis feels a pang of jealousy when he realises that Harry was spending the evening with their friends instead of with him. Maybe he _has_ grown weary of Louis’s company.

“Why are you down here, alone in the rain, then?” Louis asks, cursing their friends for letting Harry wander drunk and alone and cold. He wants to dry Harry off and warm him up, treat him the way that he should have on that first night Harry approached him.

“They irk me,” Harry mumbles with absurd haughty grandeur.

“But why did you not come back to your room?” Louis slides his hand up under the back of Harry’s shirt to test how wet his skin is. He can’t tell if it’s damp from rain or from the dewy sweat that always beads there along the fine hairs dusting his back.

“Because your rut’s over.”

It pierces Louis’s chest like a knife. He may not know Harry’s every thought and emotion, but he was in no way anticipating being discarded so violently the moment that his rut ended. “Sorry?” he squeaks, pushing at Harry’s sternum until his head lifts off Louis’s shoulder, trying to peer into Harry’s face, but it’s too dark to see.

Harry drops his lips to Louis’s head, resting his weight in that one place. “You’re soaking wet,” Harry comments. Louis tries to make sense of his behaviour, but Harry seems to be five steps ahead of him, making up rules that Louis doesn’t understand how to follow.

“So wet for you,” Louis retorts, desperately trying to make things right with laughter, but Harry doesn’t laugh. He tries something else, the first glimmer of hope that he can get his fingers on. “Surely you’re going into rut soon?” he asks, though he has no evidence to suggest such a thing. If Harry has decided that they can only share a room when Louis’s in rut, the rule can be extended to include Harry’s ruts as well; maybe they can even somehow alter their bodies to go into rut at the same time. Louis realises that he’s crying, overwhelmed by the threat of losing something that he didn’t realise he needed. He sniffles, rubbing his face along the scrape of Harry’s jaw.

He distantly hears Harry mutter, “You’re wearing my shirt.” Louis feels foolish, wearing someone else’s clothes, the sounds of his quiet sobs muffled by the roar of the rain.

He sinks into the pitiful feeling of excessive wanting. “Thought I’d be going back to yours, didn’t I?”

Harry makes a noise like he does when he’s half-asleep in the morning. Maybe the rain has started to sober him. “You’re crying,” he observes, which chokes a bigger sob out of Louis, and Harry’s hand on his cheek only soothes as much as it stings. “Wait, you did?” Harry asks.

Louis feels drowned and confused. He wants to go back to Harry’s room, where he’s learned to breathe. “Did what?”

Harry stokes his cheek like he’s a well-behaved dog. “You thought you’d be going back to mine?” Harry repeats, sounding clearer with every syllable.

It would be nice if Harry didn’t demand him to draw out all his vulnerable secrets just to rub his face in them. “Yes,” Louis groans, pressing his lips to Harry’s palm, hoping it will silence him, but it doesn’t. “I thought…,” he starts, but he doesn’t know what he thought until he says it. “I thought you wanted my company as much as I’ve come to want yours. I thought you weren’t just using me for my rut.”

Harry tilts Louis’s head back against the wall. “I thought _you_ were just using _me_ ,” Harry says hotly.

“I wasn’t,” Louis fires back. He’s stopped crying suddenly, too aware of Harry’s mouth hovering a finger’s breadth away from his, confessing nonsensical fragments of Louis’s own confessions, a confusing paradox, a perfect heat, a scent that taught Louis how to breathe.

“Well, _I_ wasn’t,” Harry murmurs, voice low enough that Louis can hear the drink in it once again.

“So neither of us was using the other,” Louis says, perhaps too loudly as he tries to push his voice past the threshold of his confused, emotional tears. He can’t believe that he’s soaked through with rain, holding Harry’s drunken, shivering self upright, all because Harry was avoiding coming home because he thought Louis would be _gone_ , when all Louis wanted to do was sleep by Harry in the bed that smells like _them_. 

Despite his tears, he’s not surprised when Harry bursts suddenly into an ungraceful snort of laughter. Instead, he just holds fast to Harry’s hips, guiding them closer to his own as Harry sways. “You mean you still want to fuck my mouth?” Harry asks, far too sincerely for such an idiotic question with such an obvious answer. It’s also too loud, echoing off the walls and making Louis hold him closer; if they’re going to make this last, they’re going to need to protect it, keep their secrets pressed between them, in the space where they learned to breathe. He feels empowered by this protective drive, like it’s something inherited and instinctual, like he was born to keep Harry Styles safe.

Louis brings his open smile to Harry’s ear. “Please,” he murmurs, overwhelmed by having suffered the storm of emotions that he’s just been through only to find himself right where he belongs. “I’m not an idiot,” he promises, hoping Harry has sobered enough to remember their first conversation together. He wants Harry to remember him, wants Harry to remember every moment the way that Louis does. He wants to give Harry thousands upon thousands of moments to remember.


End file.
